No Rush, No Dawdle: The Secret Of Proper Timing
The present is truly the only place we exist. What we call the past is a construct of memory, the recollection of which constitutes a present experience. According to author Alan Watts, the future is likewise a construct, “and cannot become a part of experienced reality until it is present.” [...]
So, to know happiness in the future, we must be happy now. Delaying enjoyment of your life is to always live in Christmas Eve, with the many gifts around you staying securely wrapped.
Moreover, to participate in the moment — to be fully aware, is to be unified with the experience, and free from the separating identity of being the experiencer.
[Watts:] "To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, 'I am listening to this music,' you are not listening. To understand joy or fear, you must be wholly and undividedly aware of it. So long as you are calling it names and saying, 'I am happy,' or 'I am afraid,”' you are not being aware of it."
Not only are you not being aware of it, you are creating the “I” who is afraid, and thus, by this separation, guaranteeing fear’s constant threat.
“This is not a psychological or spiritual discipline for self-improvement,” Watts writes. “It is simply being aware of this present experience, and realizing that you can neither define it nor divide yourself from it. There is no rule but ‘Look!’”
Centuries of Occidental society and culture have made grasping, much less embodying, this revolution in thinking very difficult. We are hardened materialists, fully beholden to identity and addicted to distraction. We evade pain and crave security, and doing so assures us painful, insecure lives. The imminent unknown is not to be avoided, but embraced. Our resilience, our adaptability, is reliant upon us being completely sensitive to the moment, and understanding it as being a new, unique experience. We live in a series of infinite nows, which are always dying, and always being reborn. To be immersed in this reality is to be transformed, for it is there that eternity is available.
“For the perfect accomplishment of any art,” Watts tells us, “you must get this feeling of the eternal present into your bones — for it is the secret of proper timing. No rush. No dawdle. Just the sense of flowing with the course of events in the same way that you dance to music, neither trying to outpace it nor lagging behind. Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.”
Tom Maxwell is a writer and musician. He likes how one informs the other. Excerpt from article.
SEED QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: What does being fully unified with your experience mean to you? Can you share a personal story of a time you got the feeling of the eternal present into your bones? What helps you avoid resisting the present?
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7 Past Reflections
On Nov 4, 2018 Quacinda Jodyne Topkok wrote :
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On Oct 30, 2018 sudha wrote :
"The imminent unknown is not to be avoided, but embraced. Our resilience, our adaptability, is reliant upon us being completely sensitive to the moment, and understanding it as being a new, unique experience."
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On Oct 30, 2018 Annie wrote :
When I am immersed I lose my sense of my self in the experience of what's happening. Not thinking "oh this is happening to me" there is just this "happening" which somehow merges this being here into the experience itself. Embodied, or "in my bones", for me means that direct experience doesn't require thinking about it or remembering, it's just awareness of being here beling alive.
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On Oct 30, 2018 Patrick wrote :
“Mindfulness” is simply being present to what is. Not necessarily an easy state of mind and body to reach especially in our highly distracted technological and secular age. The truth of mindfulness is a perennial truth that contemplatives have known for centuries and tried to “practiced”. It is the emptying of nothingness of Buddhism, the “centering down” of Christianity, and other “practices” among the religious.
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On Oct 28, 2018 Jagdish P Dave wrote :
To be one with we eperience, to live in the present moment without getting distraced by the thouhts of the future or the past is the key to living fully, joyfully and happily. This is the art of living. When I take walks in nature, I feel a deep sense of oneness with soft wind caressing me, birds chrping and the stream flowwing.I feel this sense of oneness when I meditate. A shift takes place spontaneously from the doing zone to the being zone where the distiction between expereince and experiencer fades away. When my mind gets distracted, breath awreness helps me to be centered and present.
Sadly, we are bombarded with many more distractions than before. These distractions take us away from nature, from the people we love and from our own selves. We are losing the most precious gift of living fully in the present moment.
Namaste!
Jagdish P Dave
1 reply: Christina | Post Your Reply
On Oct 27, 2018 david doane wrote :
Being fully unified with my experience means to me to be one with it, not distracted or attempting to multitask, but together with it, integrated, self-harmonious. I've had the feeling of the eternal present in union with an other and in union with nature. Moments of being fully in the present are glorious, sometimes ecstatic, and eternal. When I avoid resisting the present, what helps me is knowing that the present is where the fullness of life is, and I want and hunger for that fullness of life, so I'm open to it. I don't want constructs of life, I want life, and the present is where life is.